Spain’s major new arts hub Centro Botín to open with show dedicated to artist Carsten Höller

Spain’s major new contemporary arts centre, Centro Botín, designed by The Shard’s architect Renzo Piano, is complete and will open in June 2017. Costing around $106m and opening with an exhibition dedicated to artist Carsten Höller, the new cultural landmark in Santander is also Piano’s first building in Spain.

The “winged” 10,300 square metre structure takes the form of a bisected capsule, wrapped in 270,000 ceramic discs that “reflect the changing colours of sea and sky”. It also has floor-to-ceiling glass overlooking the waterfront, on a site formerly used as a ferry port car park.

Carsten Höller’s opening show will feature new works alongside well-known interactive installations including Elevator Bed. Visitors will be able to book a night in Elevator Bed, which is “equipped with all the comforts of a luxury hotel room,” where they will experience the rest of the exhibition as the bed rotates and goes up and down, rising up to 3.5 metres above the ground.

The artist’s new piece commissioned by Fundación Botín is a site-specific light installation called 7.8Hz, “active from sunset to sunrise” in the centre’s gardens. A sculpture by Cristina Iglesias will also be installed in the gardens.

Centro Botín also opens with a show on Francisco de Goya, the latter of which will feature 80 drawings by the Spanish artist selected from the Museo del Prado collection. The exhibition is titled Agility and Audacity. Goya drawings.

Three dimensional renders are featuring more and more within everyday design, from adverts for cars to Ikea using 3D tools to computer generate its catalogue. As the ability to integrate 3D objects not only becomes easier but more realistic, it is understandable that graphic designers are eager to learn how they can get involved, to save money on mock ups and take a project that extra mile.

In the two years since Adobe Stock was rolled out, the Adobe archive has grown to an astounding 90 million+ assets, meaning that for any creative project you’re working on, Adobe can provide high quality photos, videos, graphics and illustrations.

“I’ve always been teaching and a part of education,” comments Dutch designer Jurgen Bey. “It’s the common place, it’s where all knowledge is shared. And it’s also the place where the future always exists. If you have students no matter how bad it goes with life or reality.” Such tenacious optimism for the future has illuminated Jurgen’s dual career as an influential designer and educator. Jurgen leads Studio Makkink & Bey in Rotterdam which works in applied art and public space projects, and he is also the director of the Sandberg Institute, the postgraduate program of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.

Founded in 1997 by Colette Roussaux, cult Parisian store Colette has – in its two decade lifetime – established itself as one of the world’s most influential hubs for compelling, cutting-edge fashion and design. With Colette’s daughter Sarah Andelman working as creative director it also became a leading light in illustration and graphic art, giving a platform to the creative industry’s renowned innovators and creators. So, when last week the store posted a statement on Instagram saying “all good things must come to an end” and it would be closing its doors on 20 December 2017, there was an outpouring of love, support and reminiscences from across the industry.

At the end of the academic year, graduates from a breadth of courses at Central Saint Martins, UAL showcase their work to the creative industries in an impressive pair of degree shows. Global marketing communications agency MullenLowe Group sees this as an opportunity to invest in the university’s emerging talent, by sponsoring the degree shows and running the MullenLowe NOVA Awards, now in its seventh year.

“I always say that I don’t have big ideas, I just have lots of little ones that fill the same amount of time,” explains London artist Kate Moross. “I much prefer to take things a little bit at a time and change things that way. I think change is lots of small steps, not necessarily always the big things.” This small-idea ethos has helped Kate forge a genre-defying career as a graphic artist: she founded the London design agency Studio Moross in 2012, started the vinyl label Isomorph Records, and penned the DIY guide Make Your Own Luck. Her work has spanned from music videos to designing the tour visuals for One Direction. “I very much don’t conform to what most people think of what a graphic designer would be,” Kate confesses.